Exploring China's Past: New Discoveries and Studies in Archaeology and Art

Students of Chinese art and archaeology in the West face two major hurdles: the lack of a general overview of current developments in Chinese archaeology, and the daunting amount of material published only in Chinese. This book will provide a useful means of overcoming both problems.

Contributions by leading scholars in the field from China, Japan, Europe and the United States have been carefully chosen, edited and arranged into a coherent body. The essays cover the principal themes of current archaeological debate and practice in China, such as the question of the origins of Chinese civilisation, new trends in theory, and the history and methodology of studying Chinese archaeology and art in the West. Many of the important archaeological discoveries of the last decade, including all 50 of the sites officially designated to be of national importance, are introduced and discussed in this book.

Professor Roderick Whitfield is Percival David Chair of Chinese and East Asian Art at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He studied Chinese at Cambridge and London, before obtaining his PhD from Princeton in 1965. He has wide-ranging research interests, and is renowned for his publications on Chinese painting, Central and East Asian art, and Chinese Buddhist art at Dunhuang.

Dr Wang Tao is Lecturer in Chinese Archaeology at SOAS. He studied at the Yunnan Teachers’ University, Kunming and the Postgraduate School of the Chinese Academy of Arts, Beijing, before coming to London in 1986. He obtained his PhD from SOAS in 1993 and has been teaching there ever since. His research interests and publications have focused on traditional and contemporary archaeological practice in China, oracle bone inscriptions and Chinese calligraphy